How the government plans to use internet to fix call drop issue
The last two years have a seen a whirlwind of activities in the Indian telecom industry. The entry of Mukesh Ambani-backed Reliance Jio led to increased competition in the market, which eventually resulted in a price war that saw telecom tariffs tumbling down even as spectrum rates and per user consumption of data and calls went up.
During this period, the country's mobile operators also moved swiftly to upgrade their networks and move to the newer and faster 4G LTE standards to counter the growing threat of Jio. However, amid this move to better standards, what the industry failed to focus on was expanding bandwidth.
As a result instances of call drops, and poor data speeds have grown to emerge as the single-biggest issue plaguing the telecom sector today. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on its part has approached operators over the issue. However, with no solution in sight, TRAI has now given approval to a revolutionary idea that could end all call drop woes.
Use broadband to call landline, mobile numbers
According to a report published in The Times of India, the Department of Telecom (DoT) on Tuesday approved a proposal by TRAI to allow internet telephony in the country. With this in effect, telecom operators, like Vodafone, Jio and Airtel after obtaining a web telephony licence "will be able to offer you a new mobile number that will not require a SIM, but can be activated by downloading an internet telephony app".
What this would essentially mean is that if a user with such a connection finds himself in an area where there is network congestion or no signal, but has a working Wi-Fi he can connect to, the user will be able to use the internet connection to make calls from his mobile phone using the internet.
The report quotes Arvind Kumar, adviser at TRAI, explaining why the move will benefit users. He said, “This will give more options to consumers, especially, in areas where quality of service is an issue. These include places such as buildings and even homes where conventional telecom signals are weak while Wi-Fi availability is strong.”
Under internet telephony, users will be issued 10-digit telephone numbers that will be linked not to a physical SIM card, but will be issued after downloading a particular operators mobile telephony application. However, if the user downloads the mobile telephony application of the network he already is on, he will not be given a new number and will continue to use his existing number.
Need for bandwidth
Though an interesting idea, India's dream of internet telephony faces many hurdles before it can become a reality. The biggest of them being the sub-par mobile and wired broadband network in India. But looks like the government of India also has a fix for this.
On Tuesday, the government announced a draft policy branded as "National Digital Communications Policy 2018" that aims to "attract $100 billion in the digital communications sector" and use that to set up infrastructure that can ensure broadband access to all at at least 50Mbps speed, along with the rollout of next-gen 5G services by 2022.
Apart from this, the government is also aiming at providing "1 gbps (gigabit per second) connectivity to all gram panchayats by 2020 and 10 gbps by 2022".
Recognising the problem of the economic viability of these new technologies, the draft has also proposed cutting down licence fees, spectrum usage charges, universal service obligation fund levy - all of which add to cost of telecom services.
As per the report, the draft also aims to create "40 lakh additional jobs in the digital communications sector" and increase the telecom sector's contribution to 8 per cent of India's GDP from about 6 per cent in 2017.